Papyrus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spaghettimonster) wrote2020-08-14 12:13 pm
spaghettimonster) wrote2020-08-14 12:13 pm
Entry tags:
First Impressions / Permissions / Opt-out
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
VISUAL (Skeleton):
Spooky scary skeleton - spookiness may vary. Skeleton monster, sometimes dressed in costume armor (as icon), sometimes in Cool Fashion TM sportswear. Not quite human proportions, as he's a monster shaped like a skeleton rather than reanimated bones. No decaying body parts, no undead aura, and most significantly: some of his face, especially his cheekbones and eye sockets, shift and emote in ways you might expect a cartoon skeleton to do. Not at all muscular, tragically, and about 6' tall.
VISUAL (Human):
Similar fashion sense, now with curly dark hair that he styles heavily.
AURAL:
Speaks loudly with theatrical enunciation and a slightly rough voice from being so loud so often. Drops his voice a little as he passive aggressively complains, then jumps in pitch and volume in positive encouragement routines. His bones audibly rattle with nerves when especially excited or frightened. Very light footsteps, as he weighs maybe 40lbs soaking wet.
I do not headcanon his voice as being like Skeletor, despite the NYEH HEH HEHs - I go with something more like the videos in this playlist, the second and third especially.
OLFACTORY:
"Smells like the moon," he would claim. Actually smells more like slightly dusty bones, with faint hints of smoke from cooking, snow and pine from Snowdin, and whatever soaps / toothpaste he's using lately... possibly ones with moon-themed scents.
As a human, subtract the scent of bones and add the usual scents of a young 20s human cisexual man, plus the various hair products used to style his coif.
DEMEANOUR:
Cranky goofball, prone to posing heroically with a cape/scarf billowing behind him, sweating and glancing away shiftily when nervous, and outright stomping his feet when he gets frustrated enough. As a skeleton he's able to hold a smile uncannily well, even when injured. As a human, there's a lot more muscles to form microexpressions.
Spooky scary skeleton - spookiness may vary. Skeleton monster, sometimes dressed in costume armor (as icon), sometimes in Cool Fashion TM sportswear. Not quite human proportions, as he's a monster shaped like a skeleton rather than reanimated bones. No decaying body parts, no undead aura, and most significantly: some of his face, especially his cheekbones and eye sockets, shift and emote in ways you might expect a cartoon skeleton to do. Not at all muscular, tragically, and about 6' tall.
VISUAL (Human):
Similar fashion sense, now with curly dark hair that he styles heavily.
Three depictions of the design I usually go with, artists responsible adjacent to each: click to drop down.
AURAL:
Speaks loudly with theatrical enunciation and a slightly rough voice from being so loud so often. Drops his voice a little as he passive aggressively complains, then jumps in pitch and volume in positive encouragement routines. His bones audibly rattle with nerves when especially excited or frightened. Very light footsteps, as he weighs maybe 40lbs soaking wet.
I do not headcanon his voice as being like Skeletor, despite the NYEH HEH HEHs - I go with something more like the videos in this playlist, the second and third especially.
OLFACTORY:
"Smells like the moon," he would claim. Actually smells more like slightly dusty bones, with faint hints of smoke from cooking, snow and pine from Snowdin, and whatever soaps / toothpaste he's using lately... possibly ones with moon-themed scents.
As a human, subtract the scent of bones and add the usual scents of a young 20s human cisexual man, plus the various hair products used to style his coif.
DEMEANOUR:
Cranky goofball, prone to posing heroically with a cape/scarf billowing behind him, sweating and glancing away shiftily when nervous, and outright stomping his feet when he gets frustrated enough. As a skeleton he's able to hold a smile uncannily well, even when injured. As a human, there's a lot more muscles to form microexpressions.
IN CHARACTER
ROMANCE / FLIRTING / RELATIONSHIPS:
Papyrus' interests are ambiguous and up to headcanon (deleted Toby tweets pinned him as asexual, but word of Dog is optional) - I take his interest in Mettaton (his favorite sexy robot) as at minimum a celebrity crush. Mark him as "inexperienced," but aware of theatrical performers, in some tangle of interest in them and wanting to be like them.
PHYSICAL AFFECTION:
Shaking hands, patting shoulders, and hugs are all great! He protests against noogies (OOC I encourage hassling him like that). Kissing... As a skeleton, he doesn't have lips, so it's a little bit challenging. :(
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE:
Papyrus is enthusiastic about fighting for fun (spars showing off cool moves), so I hope you like me turning videogame mechanics into magic. Having been using magic in the politely turn-based combat of monsters all his life, he doesn't quite have the reflexes for more physical strife, and will run into trouble if he's lacking magic or if people press him too quickly. If it reaches injury or death, we'd need to do a little plotting - monsters are very vulnerable to Intent To Harm, and a sufficiently "experienced" murderer could kill him in one hit.
PSYCHIC, EMPATHIC & PSIONIC INFORMATION:
Papyrus is a more anxious and sarcastic skeleton than he tries to let on, as he does a lot of fake it til you make it-style positivity, emphasis make it. Like he admits at a couple points in the game, he strives to be pleasant and comforting, and to keep people he cares about from stagnating in bad habits by giving them a good example to emulate.
If your character's a psychic, please let me know! I enjoy when characters catch on to what he's trying to not say, and I'll include extra narration about his thoughts and/or feelings for them to notice. Just caution that most of his backstory is unclear and filled in with headcanon, so some things I just can't answer.
MEDICAL INFORMATION:
By default, he's a skeleton. Bunch of bones. Not much shape to be in. Less jokingly, he's a monster from Undertale, which means that his body is mainly dust and magic, held together by his soul. If he dies, his bones dissolve into a small pile of dust. He's established in-game to be physically fit, enough so that when he spars with Undyne - the captain of the royal guard - he gives her a run for her money.
As a human, I pin him in his young to mid-20s. TBA
MAGICAL INFORMATION:
To start, monsters are magic, in a sense that magic is a part of their bodies as much as matter is a part of ours. Their souls are more fragile than humans in their canon, prone to dissolving into the universe upon death.
In terms of magic abilities, he's got a fair share. He summons and moves bones by telekinesis, manipulates the gravity/momentum of his target (including on himself sometimes), can teleport like his brother does (but only for things like getting in Sans's room), can summon laser blasters (but due to showmanship only does so when really showing off), and can heal injuries inflicted by his attacks. Has the fine control necessary to knock someone out rather than kill them.
BLUE SOUL MAGIC - used in his fight to turn the battle into a jumping / platform puzzle, seems to be a gravity/momentum manipulation power. Can be used to weigh people down, as well as fling them into the air against walls and ceilings - Sans demonstrates this in his fight. I base this partly on some of the physics-defying feats Papyrus pulls off through the game, including sliding around without walking (ex 1, ex 2), double-jumping on thin air (ex 3), and leaping surprisingly far from a sedate walking pace (ex 4)
GASTER BLASTERS - never demonstrated in game, but Sans and Papyrus most have the same sorts of magic, and Undyne wouldn't describe him as a "pretty freaking tough" without cause. More importantly, if a human breaks off from a genocide run by sparing Papyrus, he later admits in his room that they were lucky, as "had I only used my special attack, [the human] surely would've been blasted to..." He trails off, realizing the blasters are missing thanks to the Toby-avatar dog yet again nerfing him by stealing his bones.
HEALING MAGIC - this is the difference from Sans and easy to miss, but it is demonstrated in the game just before his boss battle - if the human enters his fight with less than full health, they start the fight with full hp. (Again, he doesn't want to win too easily - if he ever genuinely wanted to capture the human at all). It makes a fun contrast; the jokey and suspicious Sans has a poison attack, while cranky optimist Papyrus can heal.
TELEPORTATION - this one's also easy to miss, but the "dog house" is locked from the outside, and Sans's room is always locked, and Papyrus accesses both. In the prank when Sans sends the human into his locked room, the lights go out and back on with the same sound effect accompanying Sans's teleportation, except it's Papyrus who's there. It could be that it's all Sans, but frankly, it makes more sense for the skeleton brothers to largely share the same types of magic, and for Papyrus to have Standards for not using some of them.
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & CONTENT WARNINGS:
By default, he's a living skeleton, which alone can be upsetting. Somewhat uncanny proportions and he doesn't parse as undead to anyone with magical sense, plus he keeps on top of his hygeiene, so there's no lasting impression of a zombie or something... but there's no getting around the uncanniness of a walking skeleton.
If you've ever played a videogame where you're a Hero who goes into caves filled with monsters, killing them to take their loot and grow ever stronger? He's one of those generic NPC skeletons, and it's a little stressful for them to live on the other side of the matter. Anticipation of war and/or murder, and smiling and going about their days anyway, is part of his daily reality.
Possibly thanks to the part where he's from a kingdom trapped within a mountain for centuries, having never seen the sun or stepped into the open sky, he drops some weird comments. Some of them indicate basic misunderstandings about how the world works, or perceiving reality in ways that aren't possible (like photographic memory across a phone call), that baffle even his castmates. Occasionally he drops stranger comments, about emptiness or death, that he then deflects away from rather than explain.
Papyrus typically refuses to even acknowledge when he's been insulted, maintaining a smile and pretending to hear something else - whether that the speaker actually complimented him or insulted themselves - to a degree that might cause unreality problems.
I sometimes headcanon that he has retcon-based amnesia in the shape of a royal scientist - blanking out much of his childhood - in part because we know almost nothing about his life pre-Snowdin, so that adds to his general impression of disconnection from reality. Other times I go with him remembering despite others forgetting, adding to his preoccupation with making friends and fame - to avoid being forgotten.
Papyrus' interests are ambiguous and up to headcanon (deleted Toby tweets pinned him as asexual, but word of Dog is optional) - I take his interest in Mettaton (his favorite sexy robot) as at minimum a celebrity crush. Mark him as "inexperienced," but aware of theatrical performers, in some tangle of interest in them and wanting to be like them.
PHYSICAL AFFECTION:
Shaking hands, patting shoulders, and hugs are all great! He protests against noogies (OOC I encourage hassling him like that). Kissing... As a skeleton, he doesn't have lips, so it's a little bit challenging. :(
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE:
Papyrus is enthusiastic about fighting for fun (spars showing off cool moves), so I hope you like me turning videogame mechanics into magic. Having been using magic in the politely turn-based combat of monsters all his life, he doesn't quite have the reflexes for more physical strife, and will run into trouble if he's lacking magic or if people press him too quickly. If it reaches injury or death, we'd need to do a little plotting - monsters are very vulnerable to Intent To Harm, and a sufficiently "experienced" murderer could kill him in one hit.
PSYCHIC, EMPATHIC & PSIONIC INFORMATION:
Papyrus is a more anxious and sarcastic skeleton than he tries to let on, as he does a lot of fake it til you make it-style positivity, emphasis make it. Like he admits at a couple points in the game, he strives to be pleasant and comforting, and to keep people he cares about from stagnating in bad habits by giving them a good example to emulate.
If your character's a psychic, please let me know! I enjoy when characters catch on to what he's trying to not say, and I'll include extra narration about his thoughts and/or feelings for them to notice. Just caution that most of his backstory is unclear and filled in with headcanon, so some things I just can't answer.
MEDICAL INFORMATION:
By default, he's a skeleton. Bunch of bones. Not much shape to be in. Less jokingly, he's a monster from Undertale, which means that his body is mainly dust and magic, held together by his soul. If he dies, his bones dissolve into a small pile of dust. He's established in-game to be physically fit, enough so that when he spars with Undyne - the captain of the royal guard - he gives her a run for her money.
As a human, I pin him in his young to mid-20s. TBA
MAGICAL INFORMATION:
To start, monsters are magic, in a sense that magic is a part of their bodies as much as matter is a part of ours. Their souls are more fragile than humans in their canon, prone to dissolving into the universe upon death.
In terms of magic abilities, he's got a fair share. He summons and moves bones by telekinesis, manipulates the gravity/momentum of his target (including on himself sometimes), can teleport like his brother does (but only for things like getting in Sans's room), can summon laser blasters (but due to showmanship only does so when really showing off), and can heal injuries inflicted by his attacks. Has the fine control necessary to knock someone out rather than kill them.
Or, in more detail:
- MAGIC "BULLETS" - summoned constructs that Papyrus can move about as if by telekinesis, typically in the form of bones, which he directs in patterns that one can dodge by jumping at the right point
- WHITE BONES - bone-shaped constructs that hit and hurt on contact as you might expect.
- BLUE BONES - as the white bones, except relatively intangible; these only hit and hurt someone actively moving, but harmlessly pass through someone who holds still. Automatic movements like breathing are fine
- WHITE BONES - bone-shaped constructs that hit and hurt on contact as you might expect.
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & CONTENT WARNINGS:
By default, he's a living skeleton, which alone can be upsetting. Somewhat uncanny proportions and he doesn't parse as undead to anyone with magical sense, plus he keeps on top of his hygeiene, so there's no lasting impression of a zombie or something... but there's no getting around the uncanniness of a walking skeleton.
If you've ever played a videogame where you're a Hero who goes into caves filled with monsters, killing them to take their loot and grow ever stronger? He's one of those generic NPC skeletons, and it's a little stressful for them to live on the other side of the matter. Anticipation of war and/or murder, and smiling and going about their days anyway, is part of his daily reality.
Possibly thanks to the part where he's from a kingdom trapped within a mountain for centuries, having never seen the sun or stepped into the open sky, he drops some weird comments. Some of them indicate basic misunderstandings about how the world works, or perceiving reality in ways that aren't possible (like photographic memory across a phone call), that baffle even his castmates. Occasionally he drops stranger comments, about emptiness or death, that he then deflects away from rather than explain.
Papyrus typically refuses to even acknowledge when he's been insulted, maintaining a smile and pretending to hear something else - whether that the speaker actually complimented him or insulted themselves - to a degree that might cause unreality problems.
I sometimes headcanon that he has retcon-based amnesia in the shape of a royal scientist - blanking out much of his childhood - in part because we know almost nothing about his life pre-Snowdin, so that adds to his general impression of disconnection from reality. Other times I go with him remembering despite others forgetting, adding to his preoccupation with making friends and fame - to avoid being forgotten.
OUT OF CHARACTER
NAME:
Swirl
CONTACT:
PM this account or![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
swirlingflight
ACTIVE TIMES:
Around 1pm and 1am (EST / UTC-5)
BRACKETS/PROSE:
Either is good! I default to prose when making top levels, brackets when tagging out, but most of all I prefer to match the style of whoever I'm tagging with so things are visually consistent.
BACKTAGGING:
Backtag-friendly! I tend to drop less essential threads when I'm overwhelmed with life, but if I do that with yours and you want it resolved, shoot me a ping for us to at least handwave it.
THREADHOPPING:
In public network threads, go for it! I find the bafflingly polite one-on-one threads to be unrealistic for social media, and not as fun as the chaos of group chats.. Make sure you match the tagging speed / chronology of the other characters so everyone involved can get some words in, and it's fun.
With private/locked threads, even if your character has the ability to do so, I prefer we chat about it.
FOURTHWALLING:
Fun in memes, go for it! Papyrus may or may not believe them, when there's other easier explanations for characters who know too much - like time travel, or amnesia on his part - but he might.
In games, give me a heads up so we can chat about it. I'd prefer to pace reveals about his future(s) or his existence as a videogame character rather than drop it all in a single wall of text (yes, one of these happened before I clarified this, and I'm still not thrilled about it)
FONT FORMATTING:
In games/memes where people use special fonts or typing quirks, I have Papyrus use all capslock and sometimes the Papyrus font - especially for anything he's handwritten. If you don't want:
I AM NOT / I AM ONLY CONDITIONALLY INTERESTED IN:
If your character has problems with too much drinking, self loathing, abuse and/or assault, suicidal thoughts, or suicidal actions? I cannot comfortably improv rp as the character who's looking out for them in a crisis or turning point.
This is especially the case if there's a risk that your character could become unplayable for you, should my character's actions not pull them back from that brink - be it because they're dead or because they're otherwise broken mentally/emotionally. Do not make me responsible for your character's mental health or playability. I need to know what sort of results you're interested in, and work with you to get them there.
Here there be baggage that I'm not elaborating on at length. Basically, I tend to disassociate around these topics in a way that makes it hard to keep my character's voice intact, and worse, I tend to anxiety spiral that if I get it wrong, your character will be Broken and Ruined and you'll stop having fun and it'll be All My Fault, etc etc etc. IC/OOC boundaries, I know. Knowing is only half the battle. Therapy is part of the other half. I am in therapy. It's a work in progress. I need you to be sure that, if you decide to break your character, it's on you.
As long as you're good with that, I can work around these discomforts and challenges - if I pace myself, and we do some plotting about what outcome(s) you'd enjoy from the thread and ways we might get there. Even if they're damaging and negative outcomes! Intentionally hurting our characters, putting them through circumstances unlike canon, is part of the fun of rp. I can enjoy a lot of popcorn.giffing and seeing where a thread and character development will take them, as long as I'm not too reminded of my baggage, or worrying that we'll make you unable to have fun.
I've tested these boundaries in the past. Chatting with a player I know fairly well (so I know their tells and don't anxiety spiral so hard about whether they're just agreeing to things or lying for the sake of getting some rp in), plotting enough to be on roughly the same page about what outcomes we are and aren't interested in (multiple paths in mind is fine), and commenting on what we're enjoying about the thread? That combination can result in threads like that time brainwashed!Papyrus talked about nihilism and suicide with Sans, before panicking and murdering him. We hadn't decided for sure what would happen at any point of the thread, we just kept an open dialogue about what the characters were thinking and after, what we the players were interested in, and outright rolled some dice to determine which way it went.
Swirl
CONTACT:
PM this account or
ACTIVE TIMES:
Around 1pm and 1am (EST / UTC-5)
BRACKETS/PROSE:
Either is good! I default to prose when making top levels, brackets when tagging out, but most of all I prefer to match the style of whoever I'm tagging with so things are visually consistent.
BACKTAGGING:
Backtag-friendly! I tend to drop less essential threads when I'm overwhelmed with life, but if I do that with yours and you want it resolved, shoot me a ping for us to at least handwave it.
THREADHOPPING:
In public network threads, go for it! I find the bafflingly polite one-on-one threads to be unrealistic for social media, and not as fun as the chaos of group chats.. Make sure you match the tagging speed / chronology of the other characters so everyone involved can get some words in, and it's fun.
With private/locked threads, even if your character has the ability to do so, I prefer we chat about it.
FOURTHWALLING:
Fun in memes, go for it! Papyrus may or may not believe them, when there's other easier explanations for characters who know too much - like time travel, or amnesia on his part - but he might.
In games, give me a heads up so we can chat about it. I'd prefer to pace reveals about his future(s) or his existence as a videogame character rather than drop it all in a single wall of text (yes, one of these happened before I clarified this, and I'm still not thrilled about it)
FONT FORMATTING:
In games/memes where people use special fonts or typing quirks, I have Papyrus use all capslock and sometimes the Papyrus font - especially for anything he's handwritten. If you don't want:
COMPLETELY CAPSLOCK POSTS, WITH SOME... OCCASIONALLY... WHIMSICAL PUNCTION. TO BETTER REPRESENT THE TEXT BOXES, AS USED IN HIS HOME GAMEor
THE FULL PAPYRUS EXPERIENCE... WITH THE COURIER FONT AS BACKUP. JUST IN CASE THE NOW-RENAMED PARCHMENT, IS OUT OF REACH,to be used in tags to you, let me know by opting out below!
I AM NOT / I AM ONLY CONDITIONALLY INTERESTED IN:
Sudden mentions of suicidal topics, ranging self-harm, plans for committing suicide, narration of suicidal thoughtsBasically, don't surprise me by dumping any of these on me in a thread, or a wall of text of troubling content on Discord w/o warning. Don't expect me to just improv threads on these topics - we have to talk.
Sudden and vivid descriptions of physical violence, especially with emphasis on anatomical realism and gore
Sudden depictions of realistic abuse (physical and/or emotional), sudden vivid physical or sexual assault, or high stakes caretaking - especially for drunks / alcoholics / drug addicts
In more detail:
If your character has problems with too much drinking, self loathing, abuse and/or assault, suicidal thoughts, or suicidal actions? I cannot comfortably improv rp as the character who's looking out for them in a crisis or turning point.
This is especially the case if there's a risk that your character could become unplayable for you, should my character's actions not pull them back from that brink - be it because they're dead or because they're otherwise broken mentally/emotionally. Do not make me responsible for your character's mental health or playability. I need to know what sort of results you're interested in, and work with you to get them there.
Here there be baggage that I'm not elaborating on at length. Basically, I tend to disassociate around these topics in a way that makes it hard to keep my character's voice intact, and worse, I tend to anxiety spiral that if I get it wrong, your character will be Broken and Ruined and you'll stop having fun and it'll be All My Fault, etc etc etc. IC/OOC boundaries, I know. Knowing is only half the battle. Therapy is part of the other half. I am in therapy. It's a work in progress. I need you to be sure that, if you decide to break your character, it's on you.
As long as you're good with that, I can work around these discomforts and challenges - if I pace myself, and we do some plotting about what outcome(s) you'd enjoy from the thread and ways we might get there. Even if they're damaging and negative outcomes! Intentionally hurting our characters, putting them through circumstances unlike canon, is part of the fun of rp. I can enjoy a lot of popcorn.giffing and seeing where a thread and character development will take them, as long as I'm not too reminded of my baggage, or worrying that we'll make you unable to have fun.
I've tested these boundaries in the past. Chatting with a player I know fairly well (so I know their tells and don't anxiety spiral so hard about whether they're just agreeing to things or lying for the sake of getting some rp in), plotting enough to be on roughly the same page about what outcomes we are and aren't interested in (multiple paths in mind is fine), and commenting on what we're enjoying about the thread? That combination can result in threads like that time brainwashed!Papyrus talked about nihilism and suicide with Sans, before panicking and murdering him. We hadn't decided for sure what would happen at any point of the thread, we just kept an open dialogue about what the characters were thinking and after, what we the players were interested in, and outright rolled some dice to determine which way it went.
☆ code by kimmiserate ☆
OPT OUT - please don't reply to this comment
In general, if there's anything with the skeleton you'd prefer to minimize for the sake of having more fun playing with him, reply to this post (not this comment) or via PM. Some specific concerns I anticipate at this point:
If you don't want me using capslock or the Papyrus font in tags to you, please let me know with all relevant accounts.
If you just plain don't want to tag with Papyrus and/or me, make use of that ban user option. You can find my muselist here, mostly up-to-date.